Bedevera d'Pont Vanis
Bedevera d'Pont Vanis, teasingly known to her friends as Beddie or simply Vera, might've lived a short, nameless life and been buried under a blank headstone had the gutter she was born into not been that of the Koviri capital. Though one of the rare individuals possessed of an aptitude for magic, her impoverished parents, whoever they might've been, failed to recognize her talent and saw her only for the disfigured, sickly creature her nature as a source twisted her into. Abandoned as a child in the city's slums, she would have been driven slowly insane by her unharnessed power if she didn't first starve or succumb to worse fates had chance not generously intervened in her favor. As the royal procession of King Esterad set out, on its way north to winter in the seasonal capital of Lan Exeter, one of the mages in their company sensed the girl's power and took her with them to be trained as a sorceress. Named anew in honor of a kingsguard who helped the mage find her, Bedevera was given some basic instruction by the magicians in residence at Lan Exeter to keep her from deteriorating before she was sent far south for schooling at Aretuza. There, she trained alongside the most talented young women from across the realms and naturally grew attracted to some of them, though her awareness of her own plain features meant she scarcely had the confidence to act on her interests. Only when one of them showed her she could achieve a level of control that would allow her to reshape herself did Bedevera come to realize her power for the blessing it was, and honed it to become a highly-regarded user of earth-based magic including auras and counterspells, along with gaining an exhaustive knowledge of alchemy and its use. When she graduated in 1266, she returned to Kovir a woman transformed and was welcomed into the court of the new King Tankred as a sorceress in residence, helping to fill the gap left by Drithelm's death in the Thanedd Coup the following year. With the guidance of her seniors Sigo Buntz in Pont Vanis and Carduin in Lan Exeter, Bedevera flourished as a courtier, working loyally for the king whom had sponsored her education and recognizing the ulterior motives of those who courted her now that her appearance had changed. When the Third Northern War broke out in 1272, Bedevera helped find places for fleeing northern mages after Triss Merigold secured a deal with King Tankred for their sanctuary in Kovir until word reached them of the dissolution of the schools of magic at Aretuza and Ban Ard. Amazing the entire court, Bedevera asked to be given leave of the king's service and depart for the other Northern Realms, a request which was reluctantly granted by the king. Braving the dangers posed by witch-hunters of Redania or the Church of the Eternal Fire, plundering armies, and the ravenous monsters of the Northern wilderness, Bedevera ventured out in search of children born afflicted with the same talent as she had, no longer saved from their power by recruiters from schools of magic, that they might also escape the fate of mindless oracles. Trivia *Bedevera picked up Gwent when refugee mages introduced it to Kovir's royal court. While she's a terrible player, having never truly taken the time to understand how its rules translate into strategies, she is an avid collector of cards depicting the Lodge of Sorceresses and plays many of them with a Northern Realms deck.